Businesses often keep information about the purchases made by a customer. For example, a retailer with a website may maintain data about past purchases on the website. In another example, retailers with loyalty programs may use the loyalty number to track the purchases of a customer at a retail location. However, these collections of data are often not correlated between different types of customer activity. For example, purchases on a website are often not correlated with purchases at retail locations. Further, businesses generally cannot or do not store information about searches but only stores information about purchases.
Without the information about searches and purchases from other customer activity, businesses are unable to determine the effectiveness of cross-selling between different customer activity. For example, how often does a customer search for information about a product on the Internet then go to a retail location to purchase the product. Or, how often does a user investigate a product in a store only to buy the product on a website. Further, opportunities are lost for businesses to promote products that are researched by the customer.
Generally, to test software applications, a user must download a test application to a computer system. Thus, if a user wants to research a software purchase, the user needs to test the application on his or her computer system. These test applications are often offered for a limited time unless a registration key is provided. After some limited amount of time, the test application is uninstalled or modified to make the test application unusable. However, these test applications are often hacked, and the nefarious user can use the application without purchasing the application. Further, the user has no help or other guidance when using the test application in this way.